Tod Bolsinger

A Cure for Denominational Depression

I’m a pastor in a denomination that is in the middle of (yet another) divide. I sat through another discussion about exiting churches at our Presbytery meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was like being part of a divorce negotiation with a couple that still loves each other yet one spouse can’t fathom being married any longer.

The parties involved are trying really hard to be civil, to be respectful, to be fair.  All in all, they are doing a good job.  This is a Presbytery with a lot of mutual goodwill. If anything, it’s the kind of place where a “good” divorce could happen.

And still it was so depressing. It would be easy to lose heart.  It would be tempting to let this swirl of inside-baseball continually be confused with where the real “game” is being played.  I know I have in the past.

But thankfully, I am now looking at this moment with a different set of lenses; a distinctively ecumenical and evangelical perspective.  Like two lenses that are bringing an otherwise blurry moment into focus, I feel as if I have been given a gift of seeing today from the vantage point of the future.

Recently I accepted a position at Fuller Theological Seminary—yes, a distinctively evangelical school. But it is also a school that is dramatically ecumenical.  Fuller has students from over 100 countries and over 60 denominations (and many of those fall in the “non-denominational” category).

Perhaps it’s because of that exhilarating, multi-denominational, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual pool that I swim in each day that I find myself moving more quickly through the depression to the hopeful moment before us. 

Yes, my denomination is in the midst of a painful divorce.  As the adult child of divorced parents I can tell you that this type of pain won’t be solved by having long talks about having long talks about how we should have long talks so that we can really hear each other.  (Oh, we all wish that it would…)  

Those who are “going” really left a long time ago. (So far, not one church in our presbytery that has entered “discernment” discerned that they should stay…)

Those of us who are staying are spending enormous amounts of energy and effort into trying to either convince them to stay or to give us more “alimony.”

And meanwhile… the mission is still there.  The world outside our door is still waiting for witness.   

Oh, we—who are so caught up in months of meetings about millions of dollars—say that this is about mission.

Those who are leaving for another denomination say that the mission of Jesus Christ is hindered because of deeply held theological differences that demand realignment. 

Those who are staying say that the mission of Jesus Christ is being hindered because those who are leaving are taking their property and purses with them. 

 Really?

So, you think that making a new denomination is the key to renewing the church?  How 19^th century of you.

And we think that more money is the key to more mission?  How 20^th century of us.  

The 21^st century is upon us. And it is beginning to look really, really different.   

That is what I see everyday.  The global church is growing with little organizational structure and few resources while we westerners who are so focused on maintaining our share of the Christendom-dream are in free-fall.   

Every week this past quarter, I worshipped in a chapel service that is representative of a wide swath of traditions and languages (recently someone prayed in Icelandic!).  Our school teaches in English, Spanish, Korean and will soon feature Mandarin Chinese.  At commencement, the gathered crowd went wild when a graduate unzipped his regalia to reveal his native country’s national team World Cup jersey.

Every day, I have conversations with bi-vocational church planters, filmmakers, NGO interns, artists, scientists, psychologists, missionaries, entrepreneurs, theologians, historians, anthropologists and yes, a whole pile of would-be pastors, who don’t really focus all that much on which initials are on their business cards. 

While the unity of the church is never served and the witness of the church is only hindered by division, the discussions around dividing have now become at least as detrimental as the issues that divide us.  

To my denominational friends, caught in this depressing discussing, let me urge you to consider: 

It’s time to hug and weep and pray and bless and say goodbye to those who are leaving (at least for now…who knows what will happen)

 …and get back to work.  

 Join hands with those who will work alongside you, build bridges with all the baptized.  Strengthen fellowship with anyone who will break the bread and share the cup.  The world is just outside our door.  The future is calling us, the global church is way ahead of us and the Great Commission beckons us all.   

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Amazing, Puzzling Grace....

Anthony Yuro, one of my friends at SCPC, wrote this response to my last blog post (he heard it in sermon form last Sunday).  I loved the imagery and asked and received permission to post it here.  If you'd like to read more of his musings on faith, art and sobriety (fair warning, Anthony is refreshingly, but brutally honest and is definitely not for the faint of heart) check him out here:

Grace came to me in the form of a 1500 piece puzzle. I did not assemble it but I had to recognize it, one piece at a time. Working from the outside in. The easier bits, the edges I could ID first. The mixed up center portion is still far from complete. It would help if the picture was stable. It is not. The image changes daily, faster actually. Every option, choice, situation is a new color, angle, brush stroke, texture. I try to locate its proper place while many times not even sure I have grasped the change.

Grace Changes Us:“Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear…”

Last post, we started a series on grace and discipleship by learning that discipleship begins with having your life interrupted by God’s grace.  I illustrated the point by telling the story of John Newton, the author of the Hymn “Amazing Grace”. Newton was a slave ship captain who found himself crying out to God in the middle of a particularly harsh storm.  He became a Christian and later a pastor.  This post, I want to tell you of one of his students.

In the film, Amazing Grace, we follow the life of William Wilberforce, a young man who had been taught the Christian faith as a child by John Newton, eventually after a season of wandering away from faith, he recovered it in a powerful way. He worked within the halls of government to bring about first the abolition of the slave trade and eventually the abolition of all slavery in the British Empire.  It took 46 years to accomplish it, but without the bloodshed of civil war or revolution, Wilberforce led his country to abolition of slavery years before it happened here.

For those of us who sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that all ministry is based on church work or mission work, Wilberforce stands as an example of what one Christian can do if he completely and utterly lives out his or her faith in whatever arena he or she has been found. 

But of course that doesn’t happen overnight, now, does it?  How does someone go from young rich boy to a man who fights for justice in a seemingly lost cause for 46 years? 
What brings such resolve, dedication, courage and conviction?

As we will see, from start to finish, it is grace.  Grace is what changes us. 

In a scene in the film one of his domestic servants asks Wilberforce if he has "found God." 

“I think God found me.”  Wilberforce says.  An echo of his teacher’s great lyric, “I once was lost but now am found.” 

For those of us who have ever been lost, there is very little better than being found, I’d think. 
Have you ever been in a place where you were so far off the track that you couldn’t find your way?  When Beth and I were in Santa Fe, New Mexico a couple of weeks ago we heard the story of two snowboarders who spent three nights in a snow cave waiting to be rescued after descending down the wrong drainage and getting caught out in a snowstorm.

They spoke of the overwhelming relief to have a helicopter touch down and find them.  It is amazing thing indeed, to be found. 

And in the good news of Christ, we learn that in the deepest sense of it, in Jesus, grace finds us. 

God’s love and mercy and kindness and goodness come seeking after us.  We don’t have to change or tidy up, or get smarter or make amends for God’s grace to come to us. God’s grace just keeps showing up.  Like Jesus addressing a tiny tax collector who had climbed a tree to get above the crowd, we are called to come down and have dinner with him.  We are invited into a friendship with God, long before we are worthy of it. 

God’s grace is offered to us just as we are, wherever we are. 

Before I go on, I want to linger here.  If you don’t catch this point, you’ll never understand the very heart of God.  God’s grace is his merciful, reaching out to humanity in our fallenness, our frailty, our sin, right in the middle of our most lost-ness. 

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Paul writes in Romans 5.  He came into this world to seek and save the lost, Jesus said.  To heal those who are sick, to forgive those who had failed.  To release those who were in prisons of their own making.  To give new life to those who were dead in their sins.  This is the God who Jesus revealed, this the most amazing good news that we can imagine, this is the truth we must trust. 

In Jesus… Grace is offered to you just as you are…

AND, because of his great love for you, because his will for you is to become like Jesus in every way, because he wants for you life, and joy, and peace, because his work is not only to save but to sanctify, not only to set us free but to use us in his freeing work…

Grace is offered to you just as you are…
But, will not leave you just as you were.

Grace Interrupts: “That Saved a Wretch Like Me”

Matthew 4:12-22
As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  Immediately they left their nets and followed him.  As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them.  Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.  (NRSV)  

The topic of discipleship is central to my own sense of pastoral calling.  Before I became a Senior Pastor, I was a pastor of Christian Discipleship.  My first book was about the personal transformation of all believers within the community of God’s people and my second book was about overcoming the hypocrisy of "non-discipleship." But even more “discipleship” was the most important concept for me to understand as a young Christian.  And understanding it changed my life. 

Unfortunately, for many of us, it is also one of the most confused concepts in the Christian life, because we are used to two different streams of thought:  On one side is gift of the grace of God that is offered to us in Jesus.  Without earning it, being worthy of it, doing anything to make God love you, he offers you his grace and mercy, adoption into his family, forgiveness of sins and eternal life.  All we have to do is believe. (And it is true!) 

On the other side is the call to follow Jesus.  To join your life to his and make his agenda for living your agenda.  To become someone who lives for Jesus Christ, who leads others to Jesus Christ, who learns from Jesus Christ how life is to be lived.  Who proclaims and demonstrates the good news of the Kingdom of heaven that is available now.

And we listen to sermons and it is like watching a coin tossed into the air spinning around and around grace on one side, calling on the other—grace, calling, grace, calling, heads, tails, which side lands up?

Now some of us have decided that the way that this goes together is simple: They are not two sides of the same coin, but one precedes the other. God’s grace is offered to us to forgive our sins and make us right with God and then after we have said yes to that grace—once we have done that—after we have accepted God’s free gift of salvation—then Jesus comes to us and says, “Now that you believe in me and are going to heaven, how about letting me teach you how you are to live as one of my followers.  If you want, you can be with me as we change the world, reach out to people, bringing God’s grace to others.  Do you wanna?” And this is the way that I thought it worked.